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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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Cognitive rules and culture<br />

Systems relating to cognitive rules<br />

6.10. The first issue conveying cognitive ‘meanings’ to PCS managers is<br />

their perceptions of how the union has altered, or is altering, in terms of<br />

the relationship between managers and lay members – can one<br />

describe any of the unions as ‘member led’ or ’officer led?’ This is<br />

complicated in PCS because of the strife that took place until 2002<br />

between the Joint General Secretaries and, later, between the General<br />

Secretary elect and the surviving Joint General Secretary.<br />

PCS hasn't made up its mind yet. There are many different<br />

things going on the moment. To be quite blunt, I'm not sure it's<br />

worth me saying anything at the moment. I'm sure you are<br />

aware of the background with what is going on in terms of court<br />

cases and elections and stuff (Interviewee E)<br />

This did not, however, prevent the same interviewee from offering his<br />

own ‘take’ on where the old unions sat:-<br />

In leaving Unison I had been interested in IT management and<br />

issues of organisations and cultures. I quoted Ouroussof a lot in<br />

all my papers and looking at all the senior managers together<br />

there were two camps and I think two cultures that summed up<br />

PTC and CPSA. The CPSA approach was that this is all<br />

nonsense, just get on and do it, we're not having working parties<br />

or committees, we’re not discussing this or that with debates,<br />

discussion or inclusiveness. The PTC approach was that we had<br />

better set up a committee to discuss this and have some lay<br />

involvement and get views on this and that. I think that came out<br />

quite a bit and certainly there were people who were navel<br />

gazing and blue sky thinking and a sort of cynical, this is all<br />

nonsense, approach. That very much describes the cultures.<br />

(Interviewee E)<br />

The idea that it is difficult to pin down PCS culture in this particular<br />

respect is supported elsewhere:-<br />

I think we probably now have across PCS got a huge range of<br />

different cultures in the different groups that are historical. I<br />

moved around different groups in NUCPS and each different<br />

bargaining group had its own way of working and different<br />

relationships between officers and lay people. I think we have a<br />

lot of diversity, probably, at the moment. (Interviewee G)<br />

But the diversity, it is suggested, has not been a benign diversity:-<br />

Both the previous unions I was a part of were the second<br />

category, partnership. Clearly with a General Secretary who was<br />

the General Secretary but not all power devolving from him. The<br />

General Secretary's view was that you were paid a lot of money<br />

to get on with it and he would praise you when you did OK and<br />

give you bloody hell if you screwed up on something. That has<br />

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